by Sophie Lark
“We got you covered,” Ares says to Leo. He’s got his arms wrapped around himself because, despite the rain, he’s only wearing a thin white t-shirt, no pullover. Probably ‘cause he can’t afford half the things he was supposed to bring to school. He may be from one of the founding families, but nowadays the Cirillos are a disgrace. It pisses me off that his name still carries clout when he’s a fucking pauper, while I had to trade two years of my life to even get into this school.
“Dean, Bram, Valon,” Leo says, fixing me with a direct stare. “Keep your people here as defense, picking off attackers. Jules and the rest of the Paris kids will act as snipers on the edges. Remember to stay inside the lines.”
He thinks if he leaves the Paris Bratva with us, it’ll ensure we don’t let the attackers through too easily. Mafia honor dictates that you obey the orders of your boss, regardless of your opinions or feelings on the matter. Even if you didn’t pick this particular boss. Even if you hate his fucking guts.
I’d like to fire my full clip into Leo’s back the second he turns around.
But it is true that I can’t let anyone see me sabotaging the team. For one thing, most of the Freshmen genuinely want to win. Even the Bratva and Penose, who have no love for Leo.
The other issue is that the Yenin name isn’t exactly shining with honor right now. My grandfather was KGB before he turned Bratva. And what Leo said on the ship had a kernel of truth to it—my grandfather did breach his blood oath with the Gallos. It’s a grave offense. One that would have ensured that he was shunned by the other mafia families until his dying day, had that day not come so swiftly after.
The part Leo wants to forget is that his family fucking deserved it. They lied, murdered, and stole from us for years. They transgressed every rule of our people, including when Sebastian Gallo defiled my grandfather’s one and only daughter. So they had it coming.
But it’s still a black mark on my name. I want to rebuild my reputation at Kingmakers. Not show myself as a traitor all over again.
That doesn’t mean I’m going to help Leo win, though.
I’ll do the bare minimum I can get away with.
And if I get the chance to stab him in the back secretly, without anyone knowing, I’ll sure as fuck take it.
Leo’s still staring at Bram and me, waiting for a response.
Bram grunts his reluctant consent.
I just give a half-smile that could mean anything. Leo narrows his eyes at me and turns away, the bomb cradled under his arm like a football.
All three teams crouch in our respective corners, our soaked sneakers making a squelching sound.
Professor Howell stands in the center of the triangle, starter pistol raised to the cloudy sky. The raindrops shatter as they hit the unyielding surface of his poncho, and his pistol looks slick and shining. He fires, signaling the start of the match.
Immediately, almost all of the Seniors and a third of the Juniors rush toward our corner. They’ve obviously collaborated ahead of time, planning to take us out before they attack each other.
I assume Pippa had to agree to send out the bulk of her force and allow Calvin to keep most of his people on defense, because he wouldn’t trust her otherwise. It won’t matter—if they work together, they’ll run train on us.
They converge in the center of the triangle, charging at us in one mass, planning to overwhelm us with their superior size and numbers.
“Tighten up!” Leo bellows, shouting for his group of Freshmen to form a phalanx.
Instead of giving into the temptation to run at the other teams, Leo orders his team to hold their ground, tightly bunched together.
“Aim and fire!” he shouts.
The Freshmen at the front of the spearhead start firing at the onrushing Juniors and Seniors. Because the aggressors are running and the Freshmen aren’t, Leo’s team has better aim. And because the Freshmen are in a close formation, the Juniors and Seniors can only shoot at the Freshmen on the exterior of the pack.
Leo’s positioned some of his best sharpshooters right at the apex of the phalanx. They’re wreaking havoc on our aggressors in tandem with his snipers. Paintballs smash into their chest, limbs, and even their faces, leaving garish spatters of bright red paint that drips and runs as it mixes with the rain.
Subtly, Pippa’s Seniors fall back, allowing the Juniors to take the brunt of the hits. A dozen Juniors stumble and fall, and the rest falter, looking to Calvin for direction.
“Keep going, you fucking idiots!” he shouts.
He’s got his bomb in his hands, and he looks like he plans to plant it in our corner. But I notice that Liam Murphy, Pippa’s right-hand man, is likewise carrying their bomb. I have the sneaking suspicion that Pippa will make sure to detonate hers first, no matter what else might happen.
Sure enough, Pippa gives a sharp whistle and her Seniors split off, trying to flank Leo’s phalanx. Leo takes the opportunity to charge right through the center, his group staying tight and swift with Leo at the head of the spear, the bomb protectively cradled under his sweatshirt to keep it out of the rain.
I expect Leo to try to cross the field to the Senior’s side instead—it’s barely guarded. But Pippa has been careful to force him the other way toward the Juniors’ corner.
It’s a fool’s errand. There’s no way Leo can make it through. I expect him to turn, even if he has to cover more ground. Instead, he continues sprinting right at the wall of Juniors, thinking he can bash his way through.
As Leo passes center field, the rear portion of his phalanx splits off, huddling down and raising their rifles to provide cover for Leo as he charges. I see Anna, Ares, Chay, and Zoe far off on the pitch, trying to clear a sideline for Leo. They’re out of position and not doing much good.
Leo barrels forward with his remaining soldiers, ducking and dodging, trying to avoid as many of the defending Juniors as he can. It’s not working. Leo is hit with paintballs again and again in his chest and legs, almost all the shots aimed at him as his Freshmen do their best to shoot, tackle, and pummel as many guards as they can.
Meanwhile, Pippa and Calvin’s teams are still attacking our corner. I shoot a couple of incoming Juniors, just for the fun of seeing them jolt and stagger as the oversized paintballs explode, staining their shirts with garish scarlet spatter.
I steer clear of the Seniors because I don’t fancy making enemies amongst the upperclassmen. I’m perfectly happy to let Pippa set her bomb. I’d help her pull the pin myself if nobody was watching.
I can see her stealthily creeping along the sideline, right behind Liam. Calvin Caccia is plowing down the middle, thinking he’s got a clear shot at our goal. Like Leo, Calvin is carrying the bomb himself, but he’s not as willing to take shots from our defenders. For that reason his progress is slower as he’s forced to huddle in the center of his knot of protectors. Still, he advances on us steadily in a straight line.
I continue firing now and then just for appearances, barely aiming. I don’t particularly care whether Calvin or Pippa makes it to the corner first. All I want is for Leo to fail.
I keep my eye on him as he continues his mad, desperate onslaught on the Junior’s corner. He gets shot again and again in the shoulder, in the thigh, then right in the gut. He doubles over, stumbles, almost falls. He takes a paintball to his right leg just above the knee, and this time he does fall. The Juniors are laughing and jeering at him, taking great pleasure in firing at this cocky little shit who had the audacity to think he could beat the whole school. Even some of the few Seniors guarding their own corner have drifted closer so they can watch.
Leo lurches up once more, but he’s facing a veritable wall of Juniors. There’s no possible way he can make it to the corner. He should just give up.
With a roar, he charges at them anyway. They raise their rifles and fire their paintballs en masse.
The barrage drowns out the shouts from the other side of the pitch. In the pounding rain, the thundering rifles and the jeers and yells, I don�
��t realize what’s happening. Until one high-pitched scream cuts through the noise:
“THEY’VE GOT THE BOMB!!!”
In slow motion, we all turn to the Senior’s corner. Ares is sprinting for the vertices, carrying the bomb tucked under one arm. Anna, Chay, and Zoe are right behind him, firing at any remaining defenders. They’re aiming for the Senior’s hands, hitting them right in the fingers so they drop their rifles, howling and shaking their paint-splattered hands.
In disbelief, I look back at Leo Gallo sprawled out on the soaked grass, covered almost head to toe in red paint. He groans and rolls over on his back. He’s grinning as he pulls a wadded-up sweater out from under his shirt.
The last two Seniors try to physically block Ares’s way, but even Seniors are no match for his size. He barrels through them, shouldering them aside with such force that they go flying out of bounds. He sets the bomb right in the corner and yanks out the clip. It erupts like a volcano, belching white paint straight up in the air.
Calvin Caccia stares stupidly at Pippa Portnoy for a moment, as the enormity of his situation washes over him. Only now does he realize why Pippa agreed to send her team out, leaving her end zone unprotected.
Almost all the Juniors are clustered in their own corner, while Pippa’s Seniors have reached their goal. Calvin has twenty men around him, while Pippa has fifty. They run at us like swift, dark shadows, and we let them through. It’s already a foregone conclusion.
The Seniors detonate their bomb, the pitch-black paint securing their place in the finals. Calvin watches it happen, his face contorted in fury.
The Freshmen pour across the pitch, physically hauling Leo up off the ground so he can hobble over to Ares and join in the wild celebrations. Their elation is twice as high as it was in the first challenge. The first win seemed like a fluke—this one is much more real.
They’re slapping each other on the back, something that makes Leo wince anytime he’s touched on his bruised and battered flesh. They’re all laughing and shouting, every one of them.
Except me.
I’m watching, silent and motionless, as Leo and Anna slowly push their way toward each other through the crowd. They stand there facing each other, the rain pouring down on their heads harder than ever. They look into each other’s faces, Leo covered almost head to toe in red, dripping paint, Anna with only two bright splotches on her body: one on her bicep and one on her hip.
Leo says something, and Anna replies. I’m too far away to hear or even to read their lips.
But I see clearly as Leo sweeps Anna up in a hug, his arms wrapped tight around her.
24
Anna
Every shower in the castle is in use.
Chay and I run down to the Armory, but even there, girls are clustered two or three under a showerhead, trying to scrub the red paint off their skin.
Our flesh is a map of welts, cuts, and bruises. The huge purple lump on my bicep looks like there’s something growing under the skin, ready to burst out. My hip hurts even more. I’m hobbling around like a grandma, wondering if it might be broken.
“Why in the fuck did they use weapons-grade paintballs?” I ask Chay, dousing my head in shampoo and trying to pick out the bits of dried paint in my hair.
“ ‘Cause they like to see us suffer,” Chay says, stripping off her gray pullover that has a sleeve almost torn clean off. “Did you see Erik? He got hit in the mouth and he’s missing two teeth!”
“Leo was a mess,” I say, shaking my head at the memory of his banged-up face.
He had a black eye, a lump on his forehead, a split lip, two gashes on his cheek, and a huge bruise on the side of his neck, to say nothing of the parts of him covered by clothes. Still, he was grinning when I ran over to him.
“I dunno,” Chay says slyly. “He looked pretty happy to me when he was hugging you.”
I turn my face into the shower spray so I don’t have to look at her.
In the elation of the victory, Leo and I lost all our awkwardness. I ran right up to him shouting, “That was fucking incredible!” and Leo said, “I knew you could do it,” and we were both smiling at each other like nothing bad had ever happened, like we were old friends again. And before either of us could say anything to ruin it, he hugged me hard, his body like a furnace compared to the freezing rain.
Then we were swarmed by other students and there was no time for anything else. All Leo could do was quickly shout, “Are you coming to the party tonight?” and I called back, “Yes!” though I don’t know if he heard me.
I actually hadn’t heard about any party, but I knew there was sure to be one. Freshmen haven’t made it to the final round of the Quartum Bellum in twenty years. We all want to celebrate.
“Did Leo tell you what he was planning ahead of time?” Chay asks me.
“He told Ares, then Ares told me, and I told you,” I say to Chay. “It had to look real, him going for the goal. Everybody had to be looking the wrong way, or it’s not a proper diversion.”
“I thought we were fucked still,” Chay says, scrubbing her arms with a loofah. “Wouldn’t have worked if Ares wasn’t such a monster. Who knew he had it in him?”
“He may be a sweetheart, but he isn’t soft,” I say.
“No, he’s definitely not soft anywhere . . .” Chay says with a lascivious smirk. “Did you see him in that soaking wet t-shirt? Fucking hell, he’s got a body under those clothes . . .”
“Don’t get any ideas,” I warn her. “He doesn’t need his heart ripped out.”
“What are you talking about? I would never!” Chay says, highly offended.
“You already have at least three times this year.”
“When?”
I list the names off on my soapy fingers. “Sam . . .”
“Sam’s an idiot. He thought narwhals were made up. Like unicorns!”
“Reggie . . .”
“He had terrible breath. Even gum didn’t fix it.”
“What about Thomas York?”
“He got mad when I beat him at target practice.”
“Doesn’t matter the reasons. They were all moping around for months after you dumped them. I don’t think Ares could survive that. He may look big and strong, but he’s got a vulnerable side.”
“I know,” Chay says, totally undeterred. “That’s what I like about him. He’s humble—not like the rest of the arrogant shitheads at this school.”
“Including you,” I tease her.
“Of course including me!” Chay cries. “But I have a right to be arrogant. Because I’m fantastic.”
“Can’t argue with that,” I laugh.
Chay and I head back to our dorms to change clothes. As we pass Zoe’s door I poke my head inside and say, “You coming to the party?”
Zoe shakes her head. “I don’t think I should,” she says.
She hasn’t showered yet and her face is still spattered with a fine mist of paint like scarlet freckles.
She has a letter open on her bed. From the look of the rigid, formal writing, and her own expression of unhappiness, I’m assuming it’s another letter from her father chewing her out for whatever one of his spies has reported.
“Fuck what he says,” I tell her. “He’s in Spain and you’re here. He can’t stop you having fun.”
“There’s only two months left in the semester,” Zoe says quietly. “He’ll have his chance to punish me soon enough.”
Chay and I exchange unhappy glances. We want Zoe to come with us, but we don’t want to get her in serious trouble.
“Let’s have a drink together in our room, then,” Chay says. “Nobody will see you in there.”
“Alright,” Zoe says, smiling just a little. She pushes herself up off the bed, leaving the unwanted letter abandoned, and follows us to our room.
Chay and I haven’t had time to tidy up this week, so there’s a jumble of shoes and clothes that have to be tossed off the beds before we have anywhere to sit down.
I love our room,
even when it’s messy. It finally feels like home.
Though Zoe’s reminder that the school year is passing by swiftly does give me a little pang for my actual home so far across the ocean. I’ve never been away from my parents and siblings so long. I wonder if they’ll think I’ve changed when they see me again.
Leo has changed.
I didn’t realize it in the heat of the competition, but thinking on it now, that was very unlike him to pass the bomb to Ares and to trust him to take it all the way to the end while Leo provided the diversion.
Leo did what he had to for the good of the team, not caring if it was Ares who got the lion’s share of the glory. Leo took an absolute beating, and I know it wasn’t just to win, for his own benefit. He did what he had to, to be the leader we all needed.
He wouldn’t have done that a year ago.
I wonder if he sees the change in himself.
Chay is getting out the bottle of vodka that came in her Christmas package.
“Don’t they search all the packages?” Zoe asks curiously. Her parents only sent three fresh school uniforms and a copy of Atlas Shrugged. They certainly wouldn’t mail her contraband.
“They don’t care if your mom sends you a bottle, as long as it’s sealed,” Chay says carelessly. “They only care about the really sketchy shit. Knives or guns or poison or whatever. Which is hilarious, because we have all that on campus.”
“It’s all locked up in between classes,” Zoe points out.
“Right, and none of us know how to pick a lock.” Chay rolls her eyes.
Chay unscrews the lid on the Iordanov, which has a grinning pink skull on the front and is already three-quarters gone since this isn’t the first time we all shared a nightcap. Chay pours three shots into water glasses stolen from the dining hall.
“To our covert operation,” Chay says, grinning and raising her glass.
I drink the vodka down, promising myself it will be my only drink of the night. I want to talk to Leo if I get the chance, and I don’t want to say anything stupid if I get too tipsy.